Get Email Updates

The Dispatch E-Edition

All current subscribers have full access to Digital D, which includes the E-Edition and
unlimited premium content on Dispatch.com, BuckeyeXtra.com, BlueJacketsXtra.com and
DispatchPolitics.com.
Subscribe
today!

LUCKNOW, India -- More than 5,700 people missing since last month's devastating floods that
ravaged northern India are now presumed dead, a top official said today.

Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna said that the Uttarakhand state government would give financial
compensation to the families of people who may have perished in the floods and landslides that hit
the Himalayan region in June.

The government had earlier put the death toll at 600 but repeatedly stressed that it would be
significantly higher.

Bahuguna said recovery operations would continue, adding the exact number of people who died
may never be known.

"The search operations will continue till the family members of the missing are satisfied,"
Bahuguna told a group of survivors Tuesday as the state government began handing out compensation
checks to the families of the dead.

The Uttarakhand government has announced that it will pay compensation of 500,000 rupees
($8,350) to the families of each victim.

Hundreds of thousands of Hindus visit Uttarakhand's temple towns during the summer. The state
is also a popular holiday destination and droves of Indians head to the cooler hills to escape the
summer heat.

Visitors usually leave before July, when monsoon rains make the mountainous roads much more
treacherous, but this year unprecedented heavy rains fell around mid-June.

Roads, bridges and multi-storied buildings were washed away as flooded rivers rampaged
through the state, burying entire villages in silt and debris.

Army and paramilitary soldiers and volunteers rescued more than 100,000 people who were
stranded in remote areas cut off by washed-out roads and landslides.

The air force and private companies made thousands of helicopter sorties to pick up people
stuck on rooftops or marooned on hilltops and to drop off food and drinking water.

Bahuguna said the government would rebuild the worst-hit temple town of Kedarnath, where
hundreds perished on June 16 when a sea of silt and flood water roared down a mountain valley,
sweeping away everything in its path.